Things We Left Unsaid
by ohcyfan
Summary: So much was left unsaid between Owen and Cristina in Episode 6x10. This story fills in those blanks.


**_A/N: The last episode of GA left me feeling uneasy, as if so much was left unsaid between Owen and Cristina. I worry that the writers have painted themselves into a corner with this whole triangle thing with Teddy, and this is what motivated me to write this piece. Here's my version of what might happen on the show to extricate them from where they are now. I hope you enjoy._**

**_Grey's Anatomy and all of its characters are the property of Shonda Rhimes and ABC. I have no rights to anything. This story is for entertainment purposes only._**

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"We did go through war together." Owen's statement seemed to come out of nowhere, dousing Cristina's contented mood like a bucket of cold water to the face.

"Excuse me?"

"What you said earlier. It's true. Me and Teddy - we went through war together."

This was not the post-coital conversation Cristina had had in mind when, replete and exhausted, she'd lain her head on Owen's shoulder just a few moments ago. She was still basking in an afterglow of monumental proportions, following some of the most passionate lovemaking they had ever experienced together. He had waited outside the Residents' locker room and escorted her home with the single-minded intensity of a man on a mission, kicking the apartment door shut as he pulled her into his arms and carried her straight into the bedroom. It was as if, in the wake of their revealing encounter in the ambulance bay, he was trying to communicate with his body what he couldn't express in words. She felt pretty sure she'd gotten the message, so why was he bringing this up now? As much as she appreciated her new mentor, this bed was only big enough for two.

Cristina turned to look at him in the dim light of the bedside lamp, saying nothing. He was staring at the ceiling, clearly struggling with how to continue. She propped her head on her hand and waited.

"But that war..." he continued, "It wasn't the only war, Cristina. I mean, yes... we worked together to save lives over there. It does create a very strong bond. I imagined myself in love with Teddy on more than one occasion over the years, I'll admit - but nothing ever came of it."

Cristina felt the sudden sting of tears beginning to pool in the back of her eyes; she looked away for a moment and blinked them back. She would not cry, she told herself. None of this had anything to do with them. It was before she and Owen had even met. While she had sensed a whiff of desperation in his actions this evening, he could not possibly have been faking what they had just shared together. Still, Teddy was here in Seattle now, and if those feeling resurged for both of them...

Finally, she spoke. "She's in love with you, Owen. Present tense. It's written all over her. You know that, right?"

Owen turned on his side and met her gaze. "I do now. She told me. But I had no idea about that when I invited her to come."

Cristina flopped on her back with a groan and ran a hand through her hair. "I see. Okay. So now I have to start hating her. Shit. I really didn't want to start hating her."

He cocked an eyebrow, and she could tell he was confused. "Why? You obviously knew how she felt before I told you that. What does it matter?"

She turned back toward him and pinned him with an intense look. "Because she _told _you. Why would she do that, Owen, unless she thought she might have a chance at breaking us up? I mean, it's not like our relationship is a secret. Women don't expose their feelings like that just for kicks. Why suffer the humiliation?"

Owen stared back and suddenly found himself unable to hold her gaze. He looked away and sighed, then shifted to his back and contemplated the ceiling again. Cristina was right, of course. And given that she was right, what did this say about his own admission to Teddy? _Why_ had he told her that he had also had feelings for her if he hadn't wanted her to know for some reason? Those words had come out in the heated rush of his anger and frustration, and he'd been second guessing himself ever since. Leave it to Cristina to hone in and clarify why this was bothering him so much. He tried to see beyond the cloud of confused emotions he'd been blundering through since Teddy had revealed herself, to grasp the truth that he knew was out there for him. What had happened in there? Was he harboring feelings he didn't want to admit, even to himself? Cristina had been his magnetic north for such a long time, but for the first time since he'd met her, there was another woman on his radar. He didn't like it one bit.

Yet he was sure of what he felt for Cristina - wasn't he? Nothing had changed there. He should be able to put Teddy's revelation away and move on.

There was silence for a few moments. Finally he spoke. "I'm an idiot, right?"

Cristina reached over and ran a small, cool hand over his chest. "Idiot... Moron... Jerk... Imbecile... Take your pick."

Owen put his hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. "For what it's worth, I was trying to help. I couldn't watch you be so miserable day after day with no mentor, and the Chief wasn't doing anything to help. I just wanted to fix it for you, Cristina. Teddy was available - and I had a strong feeling you two would get along once you got to know each other. The rest of it didn't enter my mind; it was old news."

Cristina nodded. "Yeah... well... maybe it was until now. It's not old news anymore, is it Owen? She's here, and you two have a history... a bigger one than I imagined, to be honest. Crap... now I know exactly how Mer felt when Addison showed up."

"But weren't they married? Addison and Derek, I mean."

"Yeah.

"Then it's not the same, Cristina. Addison had a claim on Derek. Teddy has no claim on me, though. Nothing. Just friendship."

"And war..." Cristina added. "You went through a war together. That has to count for something."

Owen shook his head. Dr. Wyatt was definitely right about one thing: talking things through with Cristina was good. His mind was clearing by the minute. "That's what I was trying to tell you before. There was more than one war, Cristina. And the one I went through with Teddy was the easy one, when I look at it from where I'm sitting now. It was straightforward. We had a clear mission, and we knew what we were fighting. Any two people put together in that situation would bond with each other. That's the nature of things between military doctors in wartime. I'm not saying it couldn't have gone further, because it definitely could have - but whatever the reasons, the fact is that it didn't." He turned and pulled her close so that their eyes met, and this time neither of them looked away. He was thinking aloud now, figuring it out as he went along; and as the words tumbled out, they created undeniable nuggets of fact - like a trail of lifesaving breadcrumbs to follow home through the dark forest of his uncertainty. Relief flooded his system as he realized he was not stranded after all.

"When I got discharged, I had no idea that the real war was still in front of me. I thought I was done... that I could just go home and get on with my life. But we both know that wasn't possible. I came home to fight on a totally new front, with an enemy I had never encountered before. And it wasn't Teddy there in the trenches with me, Cristina - it was you." He leaned closer, stroked her hair, and kissed her softly. "It was you. Everything that happened, everything we went through... the natural thing for you to do with what happened between us would have been to run as far away from me as possible and not look back. But you didn't. You stuck, even when you were risking your own safety, you stuck. Even when you broke up with me, I knew you were still there supporting me in spirit. You challenged me whenever I hit a roadblock, and held me to a higher standard than I could hold myself. And when I started to get better... you were the one I wanted to do it all for. You were the one waiting for me. And that's all that matters to me now." He kissed her again, and drew her close against his body, seeking to reassure her in every way possible, and as he did so he could feel the tension drain from her small frame. They stayed that way for a long moment, just breathing together in the pool of warmth their bodies created under the covers.

"So what did you tell her?" Cristina finally asked.

"When?"

"When she confessed her love for you? What did you tell her?"

Owen hesitated. The feel of Cristina's body nestled close to his was tempting him to make light of the situation so they could both just move on and go to sleep. He had had enough emotional upheaval for one day. It would be a simple matter to gloss over that encounter, to avoid relating how he had revealed his own feelings. But he owed her more than that. It was time to get all of this out of the shadows so it could never haunt them again.

He let out a breath. "I told her... I told her I had felt the same way for a while, but that I was in love with you now."

"That's it?"

Owen checked in with himself before answering and realized how much lighter he felt. He wondered if it was okay to answer that question in the affirmative without going into all the gory details of exactly how he had said it - how close he had come to kissing Teddy, or how he'd been drawn into the emotion of it all without clearly understanding at the time why or how he had put a stop to it. But now he did get it, just as he got that what mattered is that he had, indeed, not followed through on that misguided impulse. Sparing Cristina those details would be a kindness, just as he would never plague her with the ins and outs of his intimacies with other women before he'd met her. Like those, this chapter was done. "Yes," he replied, and stroked her shoulder. "That's it."

"Are you sure?" she asked him for the second time today - and like the first time, he understood that this was no idle question, that she was generously giving him the space to make a conscious choice. He knew that Cristina was telling him she would not settle for less than 100 percent of his heart, because she was giving him everything she had and more. The weight of it settled comfortingly into his chest - not a burden, but a precious gift. He leaned over and whispered in her ear.

"I'm sure."

And in that moment, he knew that he was. The image of Teddy - her eyes full of betrayal and her mouth hanging open in shock at the end of their last conversation - brought up a lingering sense of sadness and guilt, but he was finally clear that there was nothing more. Whatever feelings he may have thought he'd felt for her were irrelevant in the world he and Cristina inhabited together. Granted, Teddy was fun to be around and a good friend, but she had not been the one to pull him back from the edge of utter despair. She had not been the one to reassure him that everything was okay after he'd nearly killed her, the one to give herself to him in more than impossible circumstances, the one to make him laugh about some of the most complex and serious issues he'd ever dealt with. She had not sat with him through agonizing hours of therapy, nor had she seen him when he had been a ghost to everyone else - including himself. He understood that Cristina would be wary of gratitude as a motivator for staying together, but his gratitude - while significant - was but one of a huge array of emotions he felt for the impossibly compelling woman he now held in his arms.

It was equally true that Teddy had never frustrated and exasperated him the way Cristina did - but he realized with a sudden flash of understanding that this was because she had never elicited that strong of an emotion from him in general. Compared to Beth, Teddy had been a breath of fresh air that had taunted and confused him while he was in Iraq; but he had a feeling that if it had been Cristina waiting for him at home in those days, he would not have spared Teddy a second look beyond friendship. Cristina, on the other hand, always aroused and excited him - even when that excitement was to anger. She infuriated him like no one else could, provoking a passionate response that was commensurate with the depth of the whole range of his feelings for her. In spite of the fact that their sexual relationship was no longer a novelty, he still wanted to bury himself in her with a desperation that bordered on obsession. He literally could not get enough of her, and he realized with the gratification that comes from regaining one's lost equilibrium that he had never, ever felt that way about Teddy.

Cristina sighed contentedly against him, the warmth of her small body next to his infusing him with an aura of peace that had proven elusive of late. This was right. It was good. He kissed her forehead, the side of her face, the hollow of her neck. "I love you, Cristina," he whispered.

"You'd better," she mumbled, snuggling closer in and heading toward sleep.

Owen smiled to himself as he reached over and turned off the light.

**THE END**


End file.
